ORGANIZATIONS: Elijah *from Missoula

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As the intellectual Austrian historian, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, ten years before saw a solution for the Continent's troubles in a European federation, Streit saw a solution for the whole world's troubles in a federation of all the democracies, including the U.S. But where Coudenhove-Kalergi thought of nationalism as a deep-seated disease, Streit simply refused to take it into his serious calculations.

In the blind, headlong years before 1938, Streit wrote his ideas into a book. Before he was through, he had worked out in careful detail the apparatus of a federal government of democracies (see chart). The executive power under the Streit plan would be held by a board of three men chosen by popular vote and two men chosen by a Senate and a House of Deputies. The Deputies would be elected by popular vote; each country would elect two Senators; countries of over 25 million would be allowed more.

The member countries, reduced somewhat to the position of states, would continue to run their domestic affairs. But the Federal Union government would handle the common defense, common currency, trade and communications of some 280 million people joined in common citizenship. He used the history of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that such a metamorphosis from separate sovereignties into one union could be brought about.

He rewrote his book four times. When U.S. and British publishers continued to ignore his Union Now, he finally contracted to have the "doggone manuscript" printed at his own expense in France. In the midst of the 1938 Czech crisis, Clarence Streit's plan to save the world went into type.

It was then that Harper & Bros, in New York and Jonathan Cape in London picked up earlier versions of the manuscript from Streit's agents, read them and decided that the reeling world might like to reflect on one man's suggestions for salvation. In New York and London, Union Now appeared in the bookstores and Streit's idea was launched. A modest 13,-ooo books were sold in the U.S. It was all the encouragement that Streit needed. The idealist was reborn.

Returning to the U.S., he hit the lecture trail—a tall, gentle man with an open Midwestern face and the anxious, intent eyes of an Elijah. In one year he spent more than one-third of his nights in sleeping cars. He left the Times. He and his wife sent their children to college and lived on what he made from his lectures and an occasional article. He organized Federal Union, Inc. as the holding company of his crusade. After France fell, he scraped together $2,385 in cash and promises and bought a full-page ad in the Times to propose a provisional union of the U.S. and the British Commonwealth. He wrote another book: Union Now with Britain. While the democracies fought for immediate survival, Streit fought for what he believed was their only chance for survival even if they won World War II.